Hey Kids, It’s Chopin Year 2010!

by pieces of moments

It’s my musicological duty to inform you that in the Wonderful-World-O-Classical-Music it’s time for all us pianists to get exclusive all up in the concert hall with “Chopin Year” (they might as well subtitle it “The Year Of The Pianists”) denoting 200 years since the composer was born in Żelazowa Wola, Poland, 1810 (the exact day of birth is contested between February 22 and March 1). Being a pianist myself, Chopin has been central to all my music-ing since the symphonic works of Chopin exist in Utopia, in other words, no where, though, he did compose a bunch of songs with Polish texts that are usually not known about…now you know. In fact, my favorite four measures of music ever written are by Chopin. Watch for periodic Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (or, if you prefer to accentuate his ex-pat French father’s genetic role in the process, Frédéric François Chopin) updates on this site throughout 2010 as I simultaneously track the international celebrations and whip up my own (holla!).

Our newly minted rich boy Lang Lang opened up the festivities with the Warsaw Philharmonic (and if you are going to be in Warsaw in 2010, be sure to check out all the great Chopin concerts the Philharmonic is hosting all year, often in collaboration with the The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, including newly commissioned works to celebrate Chopin’s legacy).

First, the promotional video (in which I was glad to note the pianist is, in fact, wearing a seat belt of sorts…is there some rule about playing and driving?…and more importantly, why have I never played whilst being driven on a flatbed?…even more importantly, can someone fix that situation for me? I know lots of Chopin…we can drive for a while):

Apparently someone is also making a film entitled Fryderyk (…which, looks a whole heck of a lot better than this infamous Chopin disaster movie):